Sekolah Dasar: Kajian Teori dan Praktik Pendidikan requires authors to conduct and report research responsibly, with respect for the rights, dignity, welfare, privacy, and safety of all participants. Research involving human participants, including educational interventions, classroom observations, interviews, surveys, assessments, and the use of identifiable personal records, must comply with applicable ethical standards, institutional requirements, and relevant laws in the country where the research is conducted. Authors should follow appropriate disciplinary guidance, such as the British Educational Research Association’s Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, where relevant.

Ethical Approval and Exemptions

Authors must obtain approval from an appropriate research ethics committee or institutional review board before recruiting participants or collecting data whenever such approval is required. The manuscript must identify the approving committee or body and provide the approval reference number and date, where issued.

If the research is exempt from ethical review, or formal ethical approval is not required under the applicable institutional or national framework, authors must explain the basis for this determination in the manuscript. Where available, the relevant exemption or determination issued by an authorized body must be identified. The absence of an institutional ethics committee does not, by itself, remove the authors’ responsibility to ensure appropriate ethical oversight and participant protection.

Permission from a school, principal, education authority, or other gatekeeper does not replace ethical approval or participants’ informed consent where these are required. Retrospective approval must not be presented as approval obtained before the research began.

Informed Consent and Voluntary Participation

Authors must obtain informed consent from participants before their involvement in the research, unless an appropriate ethics committee or authorized body has approved a waiver or alternative consent procedure. Information about the study must be provided in a language and format that participants can understand, including its purpose, procedures, foreseeable risks, expected benefits, confidentiality arrangements, and any relevant limits on withdrawal.

Participation must be voluntary. Refusal to participate or a decision to withdraw must not result in penalties, discrimination, loss of educational opportunities, or adverse effects on grades, assessment, employment, or access to services. Authors must explain how consent was obtained and documented. If consent was oral rather than written, the manuscript must explain the reason and how it was recorded or otherwise documented.

Research Involving Children and Participants Requiring Additional Safeguards

Research involving children must include safeguards appropriate to their age, maturity, capacity, and circumstances. Authors must obtain informed permission from a parent or legal guardian where required by applicable law and ethical review requirements, together with the child’s affirmative agreement (assent) whenever the child is capable of providing it. Any approved exception or alternative arrangement must be explained and justified in the manuscript.

Children must receive age-appropriate explanations of the research. Their unwillingness to participate or wish to stop participating must be respected. Parental or school permission must not be used to override a child’s refusal.

Additional safeguards must be provided for participants whose circumstances may limit their ability to make a free and informed decision. Researchers who also act as teachers, assessors, supervisors, or service providers must address potential pressure arising from these relationships and explain how voluntary participation was protected.

Privacy, Confidentiality, and Consent for Publication

Authors must protect participants’ identities and personal information during data collection, analysis, storage, sharing, and publication. Identifying information must be omitted or anonymized unless its inclusion is scientifically necessary and appropriate consent for publication has been obtained.

Specific informed consent for publication is required for identifiable photographs, videos, quotations, case descriptions, or other personal information. For children, permission from a parent or legal guardian and the child’s assent, where appropriate, must be obtained. Consent to participate in research does not automatically constitute consent to publish identifiable information.

Data sharing must comply with the journal’s Data Availability policy and must not compromise participant confidentiality, consent conditions, or applicable data protection requirements. Where data cannot be shared, authors must explain the restriction in the Data Availability Statement.

Risk Assessment and Participant Welfare

Authors must identify and minimize foreseeable physical, psychological, social, educational, or privacy-related risks. Any hazardous materials, equipment, procedures, or interventions must be clearly described, together with the precautions taken. Research activities must not expose participants to unjustified harm or compromise their safety, dignity, or access to appropriate education and support.

Reporting and Editorial Assessment

Manuscripts reporting research involving human participants must include an “Ethics Approval and Informed Consent” statement describing the applicable ethical approval or exemption, consent procedures, and additional safeguards, where relevant. Studies that do not involve human participants or identifiable personal data should state that ethical approval and informed consent are not applicable, with a brief explanation.

The editors may request supporting documentation, including ethics approval or exemption letters, participant information sheets, and blank consent forms. Authors must retain relevant records securely and must not submit identifiable participant records or signed consent forms through the public submission files. Any necessary verification must use a secure arrangement agreed with the editorial office.

The journal may decline or reject manuscripts where ethical safeguards or reporting are inadequate, even if institutional approval has been obtained. Suspected ethical breaches will be assessed in accordance with the journal’s Publication Ethics, Misconduct, and Correction & Retraction policies and relevant COPE guidance.

Sekolah Dasar: Kajian Teori dan Praktik Pendidikan requires editorial decisions to be based on the scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, and relevance of the submitted work. Editors must disclose any financial or non-financial interests that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, their impartiality.

Editors must not handle, select reviewers for, make decisions on, or otherwise influence the evaluation of manuscripts that they have authored or co-authored. The same requirement applies to manuscripts involving close personal relationships, recent research collaborators, supervisory relationships, direct institutional dependencies, or other circumstances that could compromise independent judgment. Potential conflicts must be disclosed to the Editor-in-Chief or, where the Editor-in-Chief is involved, to an independent editor and the publisher.

Submissions by Editors and Editorial Board Members

Editors and editorial board members may submit manuscripts to the journal, provided that their submissions undergo the same editorial assessment, independent peer review, and publication requirements as other submissions. Editorial affiliation does not confer preferential treatment or guarantee acceptance.

An editor who is an author or has another relevant conflict of interest must withdraw completely from the editorial handling of the manuscript. An independent handling editor with appropriate subject expertise and no relevant conflict of interest must be appointed to oversee the process.

If the Editor-in-Chief is an author or has a relevant conflict of interest, responsibility must be delegated to another qualified, independent editor. If no suitable editor is available within the journal, the publisher must arrange for a qualified external editor to handle the submission independently. If independent handling cannot be secured, the journal will not proceed with the submission.

Independent Peer Review and Decision-Making

Research manuscripts submitted by editors or editorial board members must be evaluated by at least two external, independent reviewers with relevant expertise. Reviewers must not have relationships or interests that could compromise their impartiality.

The independent handling editor is responsible for the initial assessment, reviewer selection, evaluation of reviewer reports, requests for revision, and the final editorial decision. The editor-author must not approve, veto, or influence these actions.

The journal’s double-blind review procedures apply to these submissions. The editorial office must take appropriate steps to prevent the editor-author from accessing confidential editorial discussions, reviewer identities, reviewer selection records, or decision-making materials through their editorial role. The editor-author may receive only the information ordinarily provided to an author.

Disclosure and Transparency

Authors who hold an editorial position with the journal must declare that role at submission and include it in the manuscript’s conflict of interest statement. This disclosure must be retained in the published article if the manuscript is accepted.

Accepted articles authored by editors or editorial board members must also include an editorial statement identifying the independent handling editor and confirming